


The Patient

by King_Silver



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: M/M, Stucky - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-06-09
Updated: 2014-06-09
Packaged: 2018-02-04 01:48:51
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,269
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1762203
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/King_Silver/pseuds/King_Silver
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>AU where Bucky wakes up in hospital after a car accident, and Steve is tasked with looking after him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Meeting Him

**Author's Note:**

> Just a short beginning to a larger story. Hope you enjoy :)

Bucky was driving through the torrential downpour. The rain felt like bullets on the windscreen, and the wipers were doing nothing to stop it.  
He was on his way to a friend's housewarming party, but he knew he'd be late. He could hardly see anything through the rain, but he was a confident driver, so he wasn't really worried.  
That is, until a car sped out of nowhere and hit into the cars left side. Bucky left a shot of incredible pain in his arm and leg and he was thrown sideways, hitting his head hard as both cars slid, screeching, into a wall. The windscreen shattered and he could feel the cold rain on his face, and something warm dripping steadily into his eyes. The red of the bricks was the last thing Bucky saw before his eyes closed and he was swallowed be the darkness.

*

Bucky opened his eyes. They hadn't been opened for a long time, and his vision was blurred. Everything was white and the lights were startling. His arm felt odd, or rather it didn't feel at all. He was lying down, that he was sure of. He looked around and his vision began to focus. There was a door, and then there was someone coming through he door, and then the person was standing beside him.  
Bucky could see him clearly now. It was a man, he was wearing blue hospital scrubs - he was in hospital? He had blond hair, blue eyes...  
'Tall' Bucky mumbled, his mouth was dry.  
The man looked down at him, smirking. 'How are you doing, James?'  
Bucky squinted back at him, 'Err' he licked his stale lips. He could read his name on the tag over his heart - Steve Rogers. 'What happened?'  
'You were in a car accident. You've been asleep for the past six weeks' said the nurse calmly,  
'Six weeks!' Bucky spluttered, his mind still waking up.  
'Yeah, your leg's healed really well, you'll have some scarring but otherwise it's completely fine. There's something I've got to tell you, James'  
'People call me Bucky' he said, adjusting his head on the pillow.  
'Okay' he smiled kindly. 'Well, Bucky, I need you to stay calm'. Instantly Bucky was terrified. Steve could see it in his frozen face. 'It's fine, there's nothing to worry about. But there was a problem with your arm, they couldn't-'. At this point Steve stopped speaking, as Bucky had just raised both his arms in front of his face. He stared, eyes wide in horror. His left arm was gone, in it's place was a metal replacement. Bucky couldn't believe it, his arm was gone, he couldn't feels it, and yet he could flex and move the metal fingers as if they were his own. Suddenly Bucky lurched forwards, he swung his legs off the bed and sat on the edge of the mattress. He vomited a liquid-mess onto the shiny floor and retched hard, Steve's hand was on his shoulder and he was helping him to his feet.  
'Come on, let's go somewhere else' he said, moving his hand to Bucky back.  
'Sorry' Bucky coughed, turning his head dizzily to see Steve looking back at him.  
'It's fine, you just had a huge shock. That was a natural reaction' he rubbed his hand over Bucky's back. 'Really, it's fine'. Then Steve slowly and carefully moved his hands down to Bucky's flesh wrist where a thin plastic tube disappeared into the skin.  
'Hold still' said Steve. Bucky didn't move his eyes from the nurse's face as the tube's needle was extracted and Steve dabbed at the hole with a cotton bud, it hurt a little but Bucky was concentrating on the pain. Steve put his arm around his patient and lifted him shakily to his feet. There was a wheelchair in the corner and Steve gestured towards it.  
'No' said Bucky sharply. 'Sorry, it's just...' He trailed off. He wasn't about to tell a total stranger why he wasn't going to use a wheelchair. 'I want to walk'  
'Okay' said Steve nervously, 'but take it slow. Remember, you haven't used your legs in almost two months, they aren't very strong at the moment'  
'I can manage' Bucky said, putting one foot in front of the other like a toddler learning to walk. The floor was cold on the soles of his bare feet, it was refreshing. Steve still had his arm around Bucky lower back, supporting him as he took slow, heavy steps. They made their way through the door and into a corridor.  
'Wait here a moment while I sort everything out' said Steve when they'd closed the door behind them. Bucky leant against the walk while his handsome nurse proceeded to jog up to a short auburn haired woman, also in scrubs, who, as Steve talked to her, looked past him at Bucky. When she looked back to Steve she nodded, smiled, said something which made Steve awkwardly shuffle on his feet, and then she winked at him.  
Bucky looked down at his left arm, he could feel tears behind his eyes preparing to cry, but he sniffed them back when Steve came back.  
'You okay?' he said, searching Bucky's eyes. Evidently this particular nurse was good at reading people. 'Come on, I'll get you something to eat'.  
Once again, Steve reached his arm around Bucky and the pair set off down the corridor.  
Bucky didn't take his eyes off the ground in front of him, not looking up until Steve steered him towards another door. He could feel people looking at him, and looking at his arm, except it wasn't his arm.  
Steve opened the door and they went inside. The room was small, but larger than the room he'd woken up in and there were potted plants in the corners. There was a leather sofa against one wall, with a old dusty armchair facing it. Steve sat down in the chair, and gestured for Bucky to take the sofa.  
'So James' he began, but after receiving a steely glare from the man opposite him he said 'or Bucky. I'm Steve. You can ask me anything you want, I'm here to help you. I look after people who've experienced physical or mental trauma'  
After before any other words left his mouth, Bucky laid his head in his hands, metal and flesh, and let the tears pour out. And then Steve was hugging him, and Bucky was sobbing uncontrollably into his chest, holding on tight to Steve's clothes, as if it was stopping him from being sucked out of the world. They stayed there for several minutes on that battered leather sofa. Both men holding onto each other, one crying, one comforting.


	2. Leaving

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bucky is discharged from the hospital and a friend comes to pick him up.

'Sorry' whispered Bucky,  
'Don't sweat it, you're aloud to be upset'  
They were still sitting on the sofa, Bucky huddled close in Steve's arms. When Bucky had stopped crying, he let go of Steve and lay back on the sofa, wiping his eyes on his right arm. He looked at Steve and said quietly 'how come I lost my arm?'  
Steve sighed heavily an replied 'when they got you here from the accident, they had to operate straight away. You had a broken leg, most of your ribs were fractured, and you had been hit in the chest when you crashed, resulting in serious internal bleeding. Your arm was so badly damaged that they had to amputate it. We contacted your next of kin and gave them the options. We just had the latest high tech prosthesis authorised for use and they went with that option. It was an expensive procedure - they had to connect the tendons in your shoulder to the metal pivots, so it works like a normal arm'  
'Wait, who's my next of kin?'  
Bucky was an orphan and had been since he could remember. No family to speak of.  
'A Miss Romanov, she was under next of kin on your file'  
Then Bucky remembered that he'd put his friend Natasha's name on the form as she was the closest thing he had to family. He'd known her for three years now, they were good friends ever since he'd agreed to cook her dinner in return for helping him move into his flat.  
Steve carried on 'I'm going to check up on you every few days for the next couple of weeks, just to see how you're getting on'  
'Okay' Bucky nodded. He was more than fine with this arrangement.  
'You can discharge yourself as soon as we've checked everything's normal if you want to'  
'I do' he said abruptly. Bucky had never liked hospitals - they were too clean, too unfeeling, and there was something about the unnatural cleanliness of them that unnerved him.

When finally all the tests were done, Steve phoned Natasha and asked whether she could pick Bucky up. When she arrived, twenty minutes later, Bucky was still sitting on the sofa, examining his arm suspiciously as if at any moment it might seize control and attack him.  
He didn't notice her enter the room, in fact, the first sign of her presence was when she through herself into him, in a huge hug. 'Sorry' she said, drawing back as Bucky winced fiercely.  
'He's quite fragile, be careful' Steve reminded her kindly.  
Natasha looked at Bucky, wandering through his eyes, and then she noticed he was smiling, grinning, even. She hadn't seen him smile in weeks, whenever she'd say by his bed while he was asleep he'd always had a dull, expressionless look on his face.  
There were almost tears in her eyes as Bucky gripped her into a hug, resting his tired head on her shoulder, and just before they drew apart again she whispered in his ear 'he's cute'.  
Bucky wasn't sure if Steve had heard her or not, but judging by the guilty smirk that spread across his features, there was a pretty good chance that he knew exactly what she'd said, but Bucky couldn't disagree; he was cute as hell. 'I brought you some clothes' Natasha said, acting as if nothing had happened. She dumped a plump plastic bag onto his lap and continued 'get changed, I'm taking you home'.  
Bucky couldn't stop himself smiling. Even though to him it seemed like he'd spoken to her only a day ago, he could feel a strange sense of distance had just closed, and they'd been reunited like separated twins.  
'We'll leave you to it, then' beamed Steve, opening the door for himself and Natasha, before faltering and saying 'unless you need any help'.  
'I'll cope' Bucky responded, sounding colder than he meant to. He'd never liked being treated like a child, even when he was one, and he had a weak tolerance for sympathy - something which Natasha was always quick to call him out on ('they're just being nice' she'd say).  
Once they'd left the room, Bucky began to unpack the clothes from the carrier bag. There were an old pair of jeans, a pair of blue and pink striped boxers, a white v-neck t-shirt, a hoody, and a pair of worn tennis trainers, which Bucky instantly recognised as the ones he'd discarded under his bed a while back when he hadn't been able to undo one of the laces and had given up in frustration.  
But now came the harder task - actually putting on the clothes. Bucky's legs were still weak and slightly uncooperative, and he was finding his new arm distracting while attempting to pull the jeans up over the boxers once he'd taken off the hospital gown he'd been wearing.  
He was growing more and more frustrated and it seemed he wasn't being as quiet as he thought. Steve knocked on the door and asked 'are you okay? Do you want any help?'  
Bucky didn't want any help, but he couldn't see how he'd get out of the hospital without it, and after an oddly worded 'err yeah maybe, thanks' Steve came through the door gently and began to carefully help Bucky into his clothes. It was half torture, half guilty pleasure for Bucky, as Steve's large hands pulled the jeans up to his waist, brushing against his skin lightly as they moved.  
'I can do that' Bucky said as Steve almost zipped up the fly on the jeans, and Bucky wasn't sure he would be able to stay calm if that happened. Then Steve pushed the t-shirt over Bucky's mess of hair, saying 'arms up' and then a soft 'gently does it' as Bucky all too eagerly stuffed his metal arm through the sleeve.  
Once Bucky was fully dressed he, Steve, and Natasha walked slowly to the reception desk, with the nurse and friend supporting him with an arm each. And just as they he and Natasha were about to leave after he been discharged, Steve tugged on his arm and said 'please, Bucky, take some crutches'  
'Fine' Bucky said reluctantly, slipping his arms through the loops in the metal poles, and standing upright on his own two feet for the first time in what felt like forever.  
'And I'll be check up on you tomorrow'  
'See you then' said Bucky, turning around and hobbling away towards the door. Before she followed him, however, Natasha said to Steve 'sorry about him, he's just not very good with people. But I think he likes you' and without another word, she sauntered away, catching up to Bucky as he left through the automatic doors.  
Steve silently hoped she was right, Bucky was a good guy, just damaged. And he would do everything within his power to heal him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Don't worry, Bucky and Steve will get closer soon enough. I feel like they need each other.  
> Once again, any comments would be deeply appreciated, and any ideas of where you'd like to see this go would be gladly received.

**Author's Note:**

> If you enjoyed it, it would make my day if you left a comment and maybe suggested where you'd like this story to go


End file.
